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Paul r williams12/29/2023 I went to a majority architecture school in New York. Paul R Williams was not the first Black Architect that I was exposed to. Architects and designers are in my family. How do you quantify the importance of such an icon of the profession? I did not grow up in Los Angeles. Williams has had on my career as an architect, I was initially hesitant. When asked to reflect on the impact that Paul R. The event was co-sponsored by the AIA Los Angeles, the Getty Research Institute, USC Architecture, and SoCalNOMA. Williams, entitled “ Rediscovering an Icon: Part 2 - Impacts & Influences” to commemorate his 127th Birthday. “We shouldn’t,” he adds, “have to wait another 100 years.The following piece was shared at the February 18th, 2021, ULI-Los Angeles series on architect Paul R. The acquisition of Paul Williams’ archives is the moment to double down on creating diversity in our school.” ![]() We have been pushing the notion that architecture has to be more inclusive. “At USC, we talk about the citizen architect. “The circumstance around which we find ourselves now give us additional impetus to reflect on the lack of diversity in our discipline,” says Curry. And he often walked around construction sites with his hands clasped behind his back since he was unsure how a handshake from a Black man would be received. The architect, quite famously, learned how to draw upside down so that he could sketch out ideas for white clients who may not have wanted to sit alongside him. Williams, Curry notes, “bore the battle scars of racism.” The acquisition couldn’t come at a more critical moment - as the nation reckons with centuries of structural racism. (That latter archive was acquired in collaboration with three other philanthropic foundations and is shared by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the GRI.) Brooks, has already acquired critical documents in other areas, including the archive of Los Angeles artist Betye Saar, a key player in the Black Arts Movement, and the photographic archive of the Johnson Publishing Company, the publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines. Williams’ archive will also function as a cornerstone of the Getty’s 2-year-old African American History Initiative. it could have been drawn yesterday,” adds Curry. “On the technical level, the level of detail, the crispness of the drawings. It is a richness that I cannot even describe.” “It captures this big change in the profession. “It captures the beginning of the jet age with the design of LAX,” says Casciato. (Think: the series of intersecting boxes that comprise his firm’s Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Building at W. Williams was born in 1894 and died in 1980 - and his career as a designer spans the graceful, undulating forms of Spanish Revival architecture to the more rectilinear shapes of Modernism at mid-century. ![]() His archive also serves as a chronicle of almost a century of architecture in the region. She notes that though Williams worked independently as the principal of his own studio, he also collaborated with many of the big Los Angeles firms of the era on major projects, including LAX. “This will really shed an incredible light on understanding architecture better in Los Angeles - that it wasn’t just individual architects, but a network of professionals,” says Maristella Casciato, the GRI’s senior curator of architecture. It also helps bring Williams’ work full circle: A native-born Angeleno, he studied architectural engineering at USC, graduating in 1919.įor the Getty Research Institute, the acquisition adds another important resource to an already prestigious archive that includes many of the key players of Southern California architecture in the 20th and 21st century, including Welton Becket (designer of the Music Center), Pierre Koenig (of the hill-hugging Stahl House), John Lautner (the spaceship-esque Chemosphere) and Frank Gehry (the ebullient Disney Hall).
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